Australian news, and some related international items

‘This is an omen’: Queensland firefighters battle worst start to season on record More than 50 bushfires are burning with the most dangerous in the Gold Coast hinterland destroying the Binna Burra Lodge,Guardian, Australian Associated Press 8 Sept 19,Queensland is in uncharted territory as firefighting crews battle to get the upper hand in the worst start to the fire season on record.

More than 50 fires were burning across Queensland on Sunday afternoon, the most dangerous in the Gold Coast hinterland where it had destroyed homes and the heritage-listed Binna Burra Lodge.

One of the oldest nature-based resorts in Australia, which dates back to the 1930s, now lies in ruins………

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services’ predictive services inspector, Andrew Sturgess, said the state had never before seen such serious bushfire conditions, so early in spring.

“So this is an omen, if you will, a warning of the fire season that we are likely to see in south-eastern parts of the state where most of the population is,” he said.

The acting premier, Jackie Trad, said climate change meant the state was facing a new era of fire risk.

“There is no doubt that with an increasing temperature with climate change, then what the scientists tell us is that events such as these will be more frequent and they will be much more ferocious,” she told reporters.

Fire authorities have warned the danger posed by the Binna Burra fire will not be over for days, with strong winds expected to persist until Tuesday.

“We’re still very much in defensive mode,” Queensland Fire and Emergency Services’ assistant commissioner, Kevin Walsh, said on Sunday………

Dams and water tanks on rural properties are empty. Stanthorpe itself is subject to emergency water restrictions of 100 litres per person per day, with the supply not expected to last until the end of the year. After that the council will have to truck water in.

W&J Council leader Adrian Burragubba, and a group of Wangan and Jagalingou representatives, had been calling on the government to rule out transferring their land, arguing they had never given their consent for Adani to occupy their country.

In a meeting with government officials Friday, seeking a halt on leases being issued for mine infrastructure, they learned the state government had instead granted Adani exclusive possession freehold title over large swathes of their lands on Thursday, including the area currently occupied for ceremonial purposes.

“We have been made trespassers on our own country,” Burragubba said. “Our ceremonial grounds, in place for a time of mourning for our lands as Adani begins its destructive processes, are now controlled by billionaire miner Adani.

“With insider knowledge that the deal was already done, Adani had engaged Queensland police and threatened us with trespass.”

To mine any land under a native title claim, a miner needs an Indigenous land use agreement, essentially a contract that allows the state to extinguish native title.

Adani has a ILUA over the land: five of the 12 native claimants have opposed it, but have lost successive legal challenges in court to prevent it. Seven, a majority, of the native title claimants support the Adani mine.

Burragubba and a group of supporters set up camp on the land ahead of its legal transfer to Adani. He said they will refuse to leave.

He said a notice received by the council said their country “is to be handed over to Adani on 3 August 2019”. The notice also says “Adani will request the assistance of police to remove Mr Burragubba and his supporters from the camp”.

Burragubba, whom Adani has bankrupted over costs from legal challenges, said his group would not abandon their protest nor quit their lands.

“We will never consent to these decisions and will maintain our defence of country,” he said. “We will be on our homelands to care for our lands and waters, hold ceremonies and uphold the ancient, abiding law of the land.” ……..

Australian governments will give $4.4bn in effective subsidies to Adani’s Carmichael coal project, which would otherwise be “unbankable and unviable”, new analysis reported this week has found.

The Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded that the project would benefit from several Australian taxpayer-funded arrangements – including subsidies, favourable deals and tax concessions – over its 30-year project life.

It said the project would be further supported by public handouts, tax breaks and special treatment provided to Adani Power, the proposed end-user of the thermal coal in India.

Nuclear energy policy emerges as Queensland election issue, SMH, By Tony Moore, August 25, 2019Nuclear energy has emerged as a 2020 Queensland election issue after Labor confirmed its anti-nuclear stand amid a new investigation into nuclear power led by three Queensland federal LNP MPs.Labor’s 2019 state conference on Sunday cemented the party’s opposition to the energy source after three high-profile federal Liberal National Party MPs recently triggered the first federal government inquiry into nuclear power in a decade.

He said nuclear power had evolved over the past 20 years and it was time to look again.

“The committee will look at the necessary circumstances and requirements for any future government’s consideration of nuclear energy generation, including using small modular reactor technologies,” Mr O’Brien said.

“It will consider a range of matters including waste management, health and safety, environmental impacts, energy affordability and reliability, economic feasibility and workforce capability, security implications, community engagement and national consensus.”

Nuclear for Ipswich to combat growing carbon emissions, Navarone Farrell, Queensland Times, August 21, 2019 SWANBANK is one of 10 sites in Queensland touted for a nuclear power station after talks at a lobby group summit.

The Australian Nuclear Association identified the potential sites back in 2016, but with carbon reductions high on politicians’ to-do list, the discussion has been re-opened, according to the lobby group’s vice-president, Robert Parker…….

Ipswich Residents Against Toxic Environments president Jim Dodrill said moving towards nuclear energy based on the premise of carbon footprint reduction “was nonsense”.

“We’re absolutely opposed to (nuclear). It doesn’t make any sense economically, it doesn’t make any sense environmentally and it certainly doesn’t make any sense in the long term in regards to the waste from that form of power generation,” he said.

“People do try to confuse the issue in relation to (nuclear’s) carbon footprint. The carbon footprint of nuclear is very, very high – not in the direct generation of power, but in the indirect.

“You’re talking about moving the fuel over great distances, you’re talking about a lot of storage and the logistics of the fuel and the waste and the set up of that kind of generator.

“It would be, in the long-term, no better than burning coal.”

Mr Dodrill said moving towards another form of non-renewable energy would be a step backwards and that the rest of the world has moved on from nuclear.

“It would make no sense for somewhere like Ipswich – or any city anywhere in Australia – to move into a type of power generation that’s (becoming defunct),” he said.

“It’s nonsense altogether… (this agenda) is obviously being pushed by a particular sector of the far right in Australian politics.”

Bundamba Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller, a fierce opponent of any more “stinks and smells” energy in Ipswich, ridiculed the idea.

“Australia cannot even work out what it needs to do in relation to the nuclear plant in Sydney,” she said.

“It’s certainly is at no stage of looking at nuclear-based power. Our city for many, many years has been a nuclear-free zone and that’s the way it should stay.

Bankrupted traditional owner vows to keep opposing Adani, SBS, 16 Aug 19, A Queensland traditional owner forced into bankruptcy by Adani after failed legal actions says it means nothing to him. A traditional owner forced into bankruptcy by Adani after numerous failed legal actions against them has vowed to continue to speak out against its Queensland coal mine.

Wangan and Jagalingou man Adrian Burragubba was formally bankrupted in the Federal Court in Brisbane on Thursday.

“They struggle to put food on the table, let alone come and do washing for hygiene,” he said.

“I feel depressed to see people in that state … especially families and young kids.

“I’ve been helping out a bit with free loads to try to help out where I can.”

He described spirits in the town as “at an all-time low” and raised concerns about people’s mental health.

Without water you can’t make concrete

Traditionally the winter period was concreter Lachlan Carnell’s busiest time, but with most farmers cash strapped, work has dried up and he has been forced to tell staff to “take whatever [work] they can get”.

Without water you cannot mix concrete, so everyone’s a bit stressed at the moment,” he said.

“The plant will have to start trucking in water, which is going to stress us the contractors and the clients because obviously the concrete is going to go up in price.

“I’ve haven’t been doing anything for farmers lately, so it’s just been small jobs here and there.”

Levy threat causes fear

At the motel, owner Michael Jensen raised concerns about the impact of a water levy on the already struggling town.

“I think it could have been handled a lot better because there’s a lot of people out there now that are very scared of what’s ahead of us,” he said.

“We have an ageing population and a lot of those older people, including my parents for example, just have to try to find that extra money if it does come to that situation.”

Mr Jensen broke down when he described the impact of the drought on his community.

“If we don’t get water in the next three to six months I fear for the actual community,” he said.

“It’s tough; tough for everyone especially the farmers.”

‘Not just farmers who struggle’

Secretary of the Stanthorpe and Granite Belt Chamber of Commerce Amanda Harrold said the levy would be “the last straw” for many people.

“It goes all the way through the town through families, the retail, the shopping centres, all the way to the school, to the hospital — what services will be kept if we have a dwindling community?” she said.

“It’s not just the farmers who struggle in a drought.

“This community cannot bear the cost of this, there just won’t be the money.”

She said business was already down 20 to 50 per cent.

“We are lucky that some tourists are coming to town, but with tourists comes the water usage, so it’s a really hard balancing act.”

With the $84 million Emu Swamp Dam now fully funded, there is some hope for locals that the region can be protected from future droughts.

But the Bureau of Meteorology has warned the town is unlikely to receive the soaking rain needed in the coming months.

July 29, 2019Six regional Queensland towns, including the large centres of Stanthorpe and Warwick, have either begun or will soon begin carting drinking water as the state’s drought worsens.

More than 65 per cent of Queensland, including Ipswich, Lockyer Valley and Scenic Rim councils on Brisbane’s doorstep, is drought-declared.

The worst case is Stanthorpe, one of Queensland’s premier tourism and wine regions, in the Southern Downs Regional Council area.

Southern Downs mayor Tracy Dobie said Stanthorpe was on track to run out of water by Christmas, leaving ratepayers with a hefty bill to cart water from Warwick. “We are estimating something between half a million dollars to a million dollars per month just to cart water,” she said.

“That is a sizeable chunk for a regional council with 19,000 ratepayers and an annual budget of $70 million.”

Warwick would run out of water by December 2020 if it did not receive significant rainfall over summer, Cr Dobie said.

“The Warwick situation is worse than Stanthorpe,” she said.

“We can truck water [to Stanthorpe] from Warwick because there is only 5000 customers, however there are 15,000 people in Warwick and we can’t truck [that much] water.

“The only way we can do it, if it doesn’t rain, is establishing new bores and pumping.” In the Toowoomba Regional Council area, water is being carted to Cecil Downs, while water has also been carted to Hodgson Vale, Cambooya and Clifton as bores run dry.

Ipswich and Lockyer Valley councils are close to carting water to some regional areas, but at this stage are meeting water demand from dam supplies.

Over the Great Dividing Range, regions face extreme water restrictions.

Stanthorpe and Warwick residents already face “extreme-level” water restrictions of 120 litres per person a day, the same as Brisbane during the drought of 2008. Cr Dobie said the cost of carting water was significant for smaller councils.

“We have these councils west of the Great Dividing Range and in New South Wales that have really small rate bases and don’t have the money to build their own infrastructure,” she said.

Frustrated by stagnant policy at the federal level, Australian communities are looking elsewhere for responses to climate change.

Businesses, communities and, increasingly, local governments are stepping up to the plate.

Noosa council declared a climate emergency to send a strong message, according to the mayor.

As the closest tier of government to the people, it’s our responsibility to listen to the concerns of residents, and they are demanding a healthy and resilient future for their children and grandchildren.

The concerns of our communities are not being heard by the national decision-makers. Local governments have no choice but to act as climate advocates for their communities and thus take matters into their own hands.

That’s why we in Noosa shire have set ourselves a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2026 – and our community has jumped on board.

Our modelling shows that, if action is not taken to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, a much larger proportion of our residential and commercial properties will be within the storm tide inundation zone in the year 2100.

In other words, with a projected sea-level rise of 0.8 metres and intensifying weather events, many properties could be flooded in a significant storm or else subject to coastal erosion. We need to plan for this now, not wait until it’s too late.

Noosa recently became the first Queensland council to declare a climate emergency, joining 847 other government jurisdictions across the world who have already done so. We want to send a strong message to higher levels of government that this is the most serious issue facing humankind.

Noosa council is rolling out solar panels and battery storage, adopting a wide range of energy efficiency measures and tackling methane emissions from our landfill. And we are working with our community to reduce emissions at the business and household level. Of course, there is much more to be done. But we’re not alone.

We’re just one of many councils across the country who are rising to the challenge of climate change. From the Huon Valley in Tasmania to Port Douglas in northern Queensland, councils are working together through alliances such as the Cities Power Partnership.

We need to learn from each other and share our knowledge because we’re all in this together. Every local government wants to see sustainable, healthy communities that thrive in the future. And, like it or not, the future is renewable energy. Tony Wellington is the Mayor of Noosa Shire Council

A senior Queensland politician has shot down a push by a handful of federal politicians to reconsider nuclear power.

The state’s energy and farming sectors would be gutted if Queensland played host to a nuclear power plant, State Development Minister Cameron Dick told a budget estimates hearing on Wednesday.

Mr Dick was responding to several coalition MPs who want to explore the viability of nuclear power, which is banned under federal law.

“A nuclear power plant would be a disaster for industry, for jobs and for growth in our state,” Mr Dick said.

“We’ve got new energy industries, industries that will create jobs for our children, that will be completely gutted by this proposal.” Mr Dick said nuclear power would run renewable energy sources out of town at a time of significant investment, strangle efforts to build a hydrogen industry and require massive government subsidies to get off the ground.

The nuclear push is being led by Hinkler MP Keith Pitt with the backing of Senator James McGrath, while other MPs within the ranks of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government have failed to dismiss it when probed.

Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor noted the ban when asked to rule it out in federal parliament on Tuesday.

“We’re not focused on the fuel source, we are focused on the outcome,” he said.

Nationals MPs urge rethink on nuclear, THE AUSTRALIAN GRAHAM LLOYD, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR, 24 JUNE 19, Scott Morrison is being asked to support a full investigation of nuclear energy in Australia.

Queensland Coalition MPs Keith Pitt and James McGrath have drafted a letter to the Prime Minister together with proposed terms of reference for an inquiry, which will be delivered this week.

The letter will call for a review of advances in nuclear energy including small nuclear reactors and thorium technology, both of which could produce less radioactive waste than existing nuclear plants.

Commercial investigation of nuclear energy will require that a ban on considering the technology be removed from the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Mr Pitt said that the nuclear issue was “a debate we are ready to have”.

“In our view the technology has moved on and small modular reactors and thorium need to be investigated,” Mr Pitt said.

…….. Critics of nuclear energy claim it would be unable to compete economically with renewable energy and storage.

……. The Morrison government has been reluctant to consider changes to the EPBC Act on nuclear power. But the act in its entirety is up for statutory review this year.

……. The Nationals MPs expect a public review to take from 18 months to two years.

The call for a national inquiry coincides with a review into the potential of nuclear power in NSW, to include former federal Labor Party leader and newly elected One Nation MP Mark Latham.

Mr Latham has introduced a bill in the upper house of the NSW parliament to repeal the uranium mining and nuclear ban in the state.

A parliamentary inquiry will be held by the eight-member, multi-party Standing Committee on State Development of the upper house. Mr Latham will be a member of the committee.

The Queensland environment department may have acted “unlawfully” when it approved of Adani’s groundwater plan, in the process backing down on a longstanding requirement that the miner provide definitive proof about the source of an ancient desert spring.

Environmental groups are now considering a legal challenge to the approval, partly because the state’s Department of Environment and Science (DES) appeared to negotiate a last-minute compromise with Adani rather than applying strict conditions.

The DES insisted on Friday that it had not changed its position when granting approval for Adani’s groundwater dependent ecosystems management plan – the final hurdle that will allow the company to begin construction of the Carmichael coalmine.

But documents obtained by Guardian Australia, and an email sent by a DES spokesman on 9 April, indicate that the department softened its interpretation of a key requirement in the politically charged weeks before clearing the proposal.

The email of 9 April says the department believed the CSIRO and Geoscience Australia had highlighted “uncertainties” about whether Adani had identified the source aquifer of the Doongmabulla Springs complex.

“Based on the CSIRO and Geoscience Australia report, it would appear that a number of uncertainties remain, including whether the (groundwater plan) definitively identifies the source aquifers of the Doongmabulla Springs Complex, which has always been a requirement for state approval,” the email says.

Four days after the federal election, the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, insisted on a timeframe for DES to make a decision about the groundwater plan. When the clock ran out on 13 June, Adani’s plan was approved, and DES had subtly changed its language.

The state government commissioned the Queensland State Heatwave Risk Assessment 2019 following the extended heatwave over much of the state in late 2018, which culminated in “catastrophic” fire conditions.

“Over the last few summers we have experienced record-breaking heatwaves and seen how their impacts are intensified when they coincide with another natural disaster,” Health Minister Steven Miles said in his foreword to the report.

“We only need to look to the October 2018 bushfires, or the February 2019 North Queensland flooding, to see how heatwaves can cause further distress during times of crisis.”

The report, made public this month and running over 100 pages, comprehensively lays out the various impacts the predicted increases to the length and severity of heatwaves would have on Queensland.

It was developed using long-term climate modelling provided by the climate science division of the Department of Environment and Science, and is intended to be used by emergency services and related agencies to develop disaster management plans.

The state is staring down the barrel of sweating through 15 per cent of the year in heatwave conditions by 2090, up from 3 per cent in 2018, as well as an increase in the duration of individual heatwaves from four days to nearly 30.

The average temperature of heatwaves is predicted to rise from 32.5 degrees to 36 degrees, and the average temperature of the peak of the heatwaves will rise from 34 degrees to 43 degrees.

That extra heat is expected to have a range of effects on everything from people’s personal health and the environment to the multiple industries which would be affected, potentially costing the state billions of dollars.

The expected effect on individual Queenslanders is “major to catastrophic”, with increased mortality rates among older people and those with pre-existing conditions.

That would have a flow-on effect for hospital and health services, which would be under increasing pressure under this scenario.

The report notes heatwaves already result in lost productivity to industry across Australia to the value of $8.8 billion, a figure expected to increase accordingly as heatwaves get longer and hotter.

Heatwaves over a certain temperature also bring concerns about the effect on infrastructure, in particular the power grid being overloaded, as well as interruption to transport systems.

Livestock is also set to be adversely affected by sustained periods of extreme heat, along with crops.

The report offers a range of suggestions to mitigate the effects of heatwaves, while specifically not dealing with the underlying effects of climate change.

It recommends electricity providers put measures in place to reduce network demand during periods of system stress, and for future infrastructure projects to take extreme heatwaves into account for their design and planning.

It also urges industries to develop clear policies for managing workers’ health and safety during extreme heatwaves and more generally across the warmer months of the year.

Between 1900 and 2011, extreme heat was the cause of death for at least 4555 people across Australia, more than the number of deaths attributed to all other forms of natural disaster combined.

Scientists warn ancient desert springs may dry up under Adani plan, Brisbane Times, Nicole Hasham, June 9, 2019 A group of Australia’s pre-eminent water scientists say a rare desert oasis may dry up under Adani’s “flawed” protections for groundwater near its proposed Carmichael mine, in a scathing assessment days out from a crucial ruling on the plan.

Queensland’s Department of Environment and Science is this week due to decide on Adani’s groundwater management plan – one of the last remaining barriers to construction of the coal project.

Former federal environment minister Melissa Price granted approval for the highly contentious groundwater plan days out from the federal election campaign. This came despite CSIRO and Geoscience Australia raising concerns over the energy company’s modelling and proposed management……..

Mining activity such as drilling through aquifers can cause groundwater levels to fall, or “draw down”, and reduce water vital to the survival of connected ecosystems.

Seven leading experts from four Australian universities examined the latest groundwater plans and conducted on-site analysis at Doongmabulla Springs.

The team was led by Flinders University hydrogeology professor Adrian Werner, a former adviser to the Queensland government.

Their report concluded that the Carmichael project may cause the springs to stop flowing permanently, pushing the wetland to extinction.

It found Adani is likely to have underestimated future impacts on the springs – partly because the aquifer feeding the wetland had not been identified and Adani’s estimates did not consider possible water leakage between underground formations.

The void left behind at the end of the mine’s life would draw down water for many years, meaning the worst groundwater impacts would occur after the company left the site, they said.

The scientists rejected Adani’s so-called ‘adaptive management’ plan to mitigate risks to the wetland. The method – essentially a learning-by-doing approach – was unsuitable partly because of lag times between mining activity and the effect on the springs, they said.

Possible cumulative impacts to the wetland from other proposed coal projects have also not been properly considered, the report added.

Professor Werner said the research showed Adani’s water plan was “severely flawed” and risked the extinction of both the springs complex and the flora and fauna that depend on it.

“If we allow Adani to drain billions of litres of water with this groundwater plan then we are effectively playing Russian roulette with the very existence of a million-year-old ecosystem,” he said.

FEDERALSubmissions about the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility in Kimba or the Flinders Ranges. The Standing Committee on Environment and Energy are accepting submissions to the ‘Inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia’ until 16 September 2019. Please write your own submission or use FOE’s online proforma.

Nuclear facilities, including power stations and radioactive waste dumps, are now banned in Queensland.

Nuclear facilities banned under the Act include:

·nuclear reactors (whether used to generate electricity or not);

·uranium conversion and enrichment plants;

·nuclear fuel fabrication plants;

·spent fuel processing plants; and

·facilities used to store or dispose of material associated with the nuclear fuel cycle e.g. radioactive waste material.

Exemptions under the legislation include facilities for the storage or disposal of waste material resulting from research or medical purposes, and the operation of a nuclear-powered vessel.

1 FEDERALSubmissions about the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility in Kimba or the Flinders Ranges. The Standing Committee on Environment and Energy are accepting submissions to the ‘Inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia’ until 16 September 2019. Please write your own submission or use FOE’s online proforma.

Australia has long rejected nuclear power, and it is banned in Federal and State laws. The nuclear lobby is out to first repeal those laws, and then to get the Australian government to commit to buying probably large numbers of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) . This could mean first importing plutonium and/or enriched uranium, as some reactor models, (thorium ones) require these to get the fission process started. That would, in effect, mean importing nuclear wastes.

There’s an all-too short period for people to send in Submissions to the 4 Parliamentary Inquiries now in progress.